Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to engineering design and, more specifically, to a design space for materials selection.
Description of the Related Art
In a typical design process, an engineer evaluates a set of design criteria associated with a design problem, and then generates geometry that solves the design problem. The engineer may then select a specific material for fabricating the geometry. The engineer analyzes a simulated instance of the geometry, composed of the selected material, via a computer simulation. If the results of the simulation prove that the current design, when constructed from the selected material, fails to meet the design criteria, then the engineer must modify the design and/or the selection of materials.
For example, in designing a bridge that must support specific loads and span a certain distance, an engineer could generate an assembly of trusses having particular geometry that spans the requisite distance. Then, the engineer could select a material, such as steel for the bridge, and generate a simulation of a steel bridge that spans the requisite distance. If the engineer were then to determine that the simulated steel bridge cannot support the necessary loads, then the engineer would have to modify the bridge design and/or the choice of materials and generate another simulation.
One drawback of the above approach is that an engineer oftentimes ends up performing multiple design simulations, which requires the engineer to create multiple designs and test each design with one or more different materials until an acceptable design is found. With complex designs that may be composed of a wide range of different materials, this process can be highly tedious and time-consuming. In particular, when hundreds or thousands of design options exist, potentially composed from any of a number of different materials, the engineer is required to manually evaluate each different design option. Also, when an acceptable design is found, there is no way to know whether that design represents the best possible design.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a more effective approach for evaluating designs.